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planned obsolescence

I almost bought a new com­put­er today, but then I talked myself out of it.
“Do I real­ly want to do this?” I won­dered. In just a year or two it will be
obso­lete, just like my cur­rent (ten-year-old) com­put­er.

This led to a depress­ing spi­ral of thought. Com­put­ers are per­fect exam­ples
of planned obso­les­cence. Today’s aver­age com­put­er user uses his machine to
per­form the same tasks that he need­ed a com­put­er for ten years ago. But would
today’s soft­ware run on a com­put­er from ten years ago? I chal­lenge you to try
that with Win­dows Vista.

I don’t think com­put­ers have improved sub­stan­tial­ly in ten years. Sure,
they’re faster, and arguably bet­ter look­ing. But those changes are just icing
on a very expen­sive cake. I just want to check my e-mail. Not that I was
plan­ning to reply in a time­ly fash­ion.

Mobile phones are designed to be thrown away after 2 or 3 years. Some­thing
like 150 mil­lion go to land­fills every year. They don’t decom­pose! Of course my
Mod­el 2500 home
phone still works after 35 years, and it still has bet­ter sound qual­i­ty than
any cell­phone. I admit that it won’t fit in my pock­et and it can’t
remote-con­trol my blender, but those are draw­backs that I can live with.

My Mach 3 razor
blades are ter­ri­ble. They give a great shave, but I’m already plan­ning to throw
them away from the moment I open the box. In fact, the patent­ed lubri­cat­ing
strip changes col­or to remind me that its time has come. That both­ers me. One
of these days I’ll learn to shave with a straight blade.

Mar­di Gras beads are meant to be thrown away almost imme­di­ate­ly after
pur­chas­ing. A friend of mine likes to pon­der life from the per­spec­tive of the
Chi­nese girls who work 10 hour days in Mar­di Gras bead neck­lace fac­to­ries. What
do they think we’re doing here in Amer­i­ca with mil­lions of ugly neck­laces?

I would men­tion cars in the same way, but they’re a spe­cial case. Lewis
Mum­ford described America’s trans­porta­tion sys­tem as “monotechnic”—fraught
with the same kind of prob­lems that mono­cul­ture has brought to
Amer­i­can crops. Heavy reliance on auto­mo­biles has led them to inter­fere with
oth­er modes of trans­porta­tion. (Let’s not even con­sid­er those spe­cial
cas­es of pure stu­pid­i­ty in trans­porta­tion his­to­ry.)

Wikipedia says this about Lewis Mum­ford:

In The Myth of the Machine: tech­nics and human devel­op­ment
(1967), Mum­ford crit­i­cizes the mod­ern trend of tech­nol­o­gy, which empha­sizes
con­stant, unre­strict­ed expan­sion, pro­duc­tion, and replace­ment. He explains
that these goals work against tech­ni­cal per­fec­tion, dura­bil­i­ty, social
effi­cien­cy, and over­all human sat­is­fac­tion. Mod­ern technology—which he calls
‘megatechnics’—evades pro­duc­ing last­ing, qual­i­ty prod­ucts by using devices
such as con­sumer cred­it, install­ment buy­ing, non-func­tion­ing and defec­tive
designs, built-in fragili­ty, and fre­quent super­fi­cial “fash­ion” changes.

There’s a book I need to add to my read­ing list! I’m doing it in the name of
over­all human sat­is­fac­tion.